I’ve never been able to adequately explain my fascination with pirates. I love everything pirate. Hats, swords, patches, peg legs (kidding). Anyway, I guess I read Treasure Island a bunch as kid, and pirates became a symbol to me of daring and adventure. Some people have a bit of trouble reconciling that with my Christian faith. I’ve never had that problem.

Sir Francis Drake was a privateer to the British but a pirate to everyone else. He swashbuckled his way through life. While I really can’t condone his behavior at sea, I am profoundly moved by this prayer he wrote in 1577 before setting out on his conquest of the Pacific and his circumnavigation of the globe:

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

AMEN, Captain Drake. Disturb me Lord to dare more boldly. —st